An Arrest That Shocked a Town

Mother of Ex-Anchor Seeks Treatment for Him

After Donald Cross, the first African American television anchor in Meridian, Miss., was arrested Oct. 13 and charged with armed robbery, “he appeared to be a guy going through a major depression,” Ken Henley, the owner of Hurricane Bonding Co. in Meridian, told Journal-isms on Friday.

“I don’t know what about,” said Henley, who said he had known Cross for years. “I bonded him out so he could seek some immediate medical attention. He went to a local hospital here.”

Cross is now at his mother’s home in Meridian as she tries to place him in treatment and seeks legal advice, Cross’ mother, Paralee Thomas, told Journal-isms.

The city of Meridian, population 45,000, was shocked by the arrest of the hometown boy who became a television reporter and anchor, and more recently the city’s equal opportunity officer. “It left us with our mouths open,” said Police Capt. Bettye B. Evans, a Meridian native. “All the city employees knew him” because of Cross’ work as EEO officer from 1988 to 2005, where “he built a good reputation for his work and his professionalism,” Evans said.

Cross, 59, was a reporter and anchor at WTOK-TV in Meridian in the 1970s, leaving about 1981. He went on to report for WLBT- TV in Jackson, Miss., and for the NBC affiliate in Meridian, remaining in the business until 1985.

“I remember when everybody would gather around to watch him,” said Robert Naylor Jr., another Meridian native, who is now director of career development for the Associated Press. “I worked with Don Cross briefly at WTOK. I considered Don a role model, as did many other young African Americans in that part of the country who went on to become journalists,” said Naylor, who is 50. “It was his presence on WTOK that in part inspired me to pursue a journalism career. Seeing Don made us say, ‘yes, we can do it.'”

But journalists are susceptible to the same problems as other people. Cross’ first wife died after a long illness, his second wife left him and he had recurring problems with alcohol, said John Nelson, a retired police lieutenant who grew up with Cross on Meridian’s South Side. Nelson, who also heads the local NAACP chapter, said Cross lived with him for about a year after Cross’ divorce.

“He was a good person and a good professional person who got caught up in alcoholism, which is a disease,” Nelson said. “The solution is to try to get that person back to real life.”

Jesse E. Palmer, a member of the City Council, recruited Cross for the EEO job when he chaired the civil service board. “He was the best person we thought we could find,” and he scored 100 on the civil service test, Palmer told Journal-isms. “He was like a son,” was active in the optimist club teaching young people such things as bicycle safety, and developed a reputation as an advocate for city employees who believed they faced gender, racial or other unlawful discrimination.

When he resigned from the EEO job, “he didn’t seem like he was the same person,” Palmer said. He did some substitute teaching at Northeastern Junior High School.

As reported on Wednesday, on the morning of Oct. 13, a suspect wearing a “curly-type” wig and a long coat displayed a handgun and demanded cash from a teller at Muna Federal Credit Union on Highway 19 North in Meridian, according to police and news reports.

The suspect fled in a white vehicle, and a witness noted the tag number. The vehicle was spotted about 4 p.m. and Cross was arrested, Sgt. J.C. Lewis told Journal-isms.

Cross was charged with armed robbery and posted a $25,000 bond later that day. The case goes to the grand jury in March, Lewis said.

Relatives—his mother and uncles—came to his aid, Henley said.

“This has been very traumatic,” his mother said. “The thing that happened is not my son.”

Henley said, “I hope they’ll be able to work something out — treatment, the help that he needs. He told me he had a lot going through his mind.”

Police said Cross had no lawyer and might be given a court-appointed attorney.

Not if Nelson has anything to do with it. “He won’t be having no court-appointed lawyer,” said his lifelong friend. “Members of the NAACP would take up a collection to make sure he got legitimate representation. We’ll stand by him. When you have good people that suffer from that type of disease, people should reach out.”

• Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Pioneering Mississippi TV Reporter Donald Cross Arrested for Armed Robbery

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NBC News Chief Tells Workers of Cutback Plans

NBC plans to offer early retirement as the first stage of its plan to to slash annual expenses by $750 million in part by cutting 700 jobs, NBC News President Steve Capus told news division employees on Friday.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists protested plans to dissolve local news offices of NBC’s Spanish-language Telemundo network in San Jose, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, Denver and Dallas, and replacing them with a “Telemundo Production Center” based in Dallas.

“This shows a serious lack of commitment to serving the needs of the Spanish-speaking Latino community by providing local news,” NAHJ President Rafael Olmeda and Executive Director Ivan Roman said in a letter to Bob Wright, vice chairman and executive office of GE, NBC’s parent company.

Capus held a “town hall” meeting with NBC News employees in one of its news studios. The meeting was also webcast internally.

Capus said that after the early retirement packages are offered to those eligible, a process that could take weeks or months, “then we move at systems and how they can work more efficiently,” Lyne Pitts, executive producer of the “Today” show’s weekend edition, told Journal-isms.

“Then after that, other issues. People are being patient,” she said. “They are listening to what people are saying. People aren’t talking about it a lot. People didn’t have a lot of questions.” In her department, some have already offered cost-cutting suggestions, Pitts said.

“Someone asked how many of the 700 jobs will come from the news division,” another NBC employee told Journal-isms. The answer was “to be determined.” “The number of jobs that are cut will depend on how many accept early retirement packages and/or volunteer for contract buyouts. People were encouraged to come forward if they are interested in buyouts. HR has identified staffers that will be contacted about early retirement. Cuts will be made gradually starting now through next year,” the employee said.

As TV Week reported Thursday about NBC’s plans, “The boldest stroke will move MSNBC to NBC News’s Manhattan headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza from the cable channel’s New Jersey home of 10 years.

“Some MSNBC departments may be moved down the banks of the Hudson River to CNBC’s spacious operations in Englewood, N.J., Mr. Capus said” in an interview with that publication.

“If, at any time, the actions taken by my company today end up compromising our mission to gather and report the news, I will make my feelings known loudly and promptly,” “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams told viewers Thursday on his blog.

But it was the Telemundo cuts that drew protests from NAHJ.

A story in the San Jose Mercury News Friday by Javier Erik Olvera and Veronica Villafañe, NAHJ’s immediate past president, said, “A five-person bureau will replace Telemundo’s existing local news operation, with reporters feeding their stories to shows based in Burbank and Dallas/Forth Worth.”

The NAHJ letter to Wright said, “let us remind you that Section 307 of the Communications Act of 1934 includes a provision that broadcasters be responsive to the needs of the local community. By cutting local news stations how can Telemundo be responsive to the local Spanish-speaking community?”

Allison Gollust, NBC’s designated spokeswoman on the company’s plans, did not respond to several phone calls and e-mails.

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San Jose Paper to Cut 101 Positions; Philly Next

“The San Jose Mercury News plans to reduce its staff by 101 positions by Dec. 19, according to a memo the newspaper sent to its employees on Friday,” Carolyn Said reported Friday on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site. “The projected staff cuts include 40 positions in the newsroom, or about 14 percent of the staff of 280.

“In a related development, the editor of the Contra Costa Times, Chris Lopez, is leaving the paper after six and a half years there because his position has become ‘redundant,’ according to an internal memo.

And in Philadelphia, “The new publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News told employees Friday that layoffs are ‘unavoidable’ because advertising revenue is down and the owners need to cut costs to meet their bank obligations,” Patrick Walters reported for the Associated Press.

The story from California continued, “The Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times were acquired earlier this year by MediaNews Group, a Denver publisher that already owns every other major newspaper in the Bay Area, except The Chronicle, which is owned by New York’s Hearst Corp. In a complex transaction, Hearst provided financial backing for MediaNews’ purchase of some other papers in exchange for an unspecified stake in MediaNews properties outside the Bay Area.

“‘We’re seeing consolidation, or clustering, as they call it,’ under MediaNews ownership, said Luther Jackson, executive director of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, which represents about 500 employees at the Mercury News, including newsroom, advertising, finance, circulations, marketing, and janitorial workers. Six years ago, the Mercury News had 820 Guild positions, he said.”

• Statement from the Guild bargaining committee

 

• Gilbert Cranberg, Nieman Watchdog: Timidity at Work

 

• Christine Tatum blog, Society of Professional Journalists: Take on the Trib and LAT? Not so fast.

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More Reasons Latinos Skip NBC, CBS, ABC News

When the Nielsen ratings after Katie Couric’s first week as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in September showed a remarkably low number of Hispanics watching any of the broadcast network evening news shows, Manuel De La Rosa, vice president/broadcast of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, told Journal-isms those shows “don’t give me a reason to want to watch. They don’t address Hispanic working families . . there are not enough Hispanic experts on the air . . . Those newscasts don’t appeal to us.”

The latest edition of NAHJ’s “Network Brownout Report” echoes De La Rosa’s conclusions about the content.

It said, “The booming growth of the Latino population (in numbers and in economic and political power) should serve as a wake-up call for the news networks. But each year very little changes and this report continues to yield the same dismal results. Latinos make up 14.5 percent of the U.S. population but less than one percent of stories on the network evening news.

“One major problem shown by this report is that Latino voices are lacking in news coverage. Key political stories about Latinos lacked Hispanic perspectives. The vast majority of immigration stories were also not told from the Latino perspective.”

It said, “The qualitative analysis of Latino stories found:

• “Latinos were featured in a variety of universal stories that did not focus on ethnicity.
• “In contrast to 2004, Latinos were more often portrayed in crime stories in 2005. For most of these stories, Latinos were the perpetrators, not the victims.
• “Immigration did not dominate the framing of Latino stories as it has in years past. Even so, immigration was still a popular topic for the networks to cover. One dominant theme in immigration coverage for 2005 was the notion that immigrants, mostly undocumented, were changing communities across the United States. These stories were often told from the perspective of longtime community residents, and not from the perspective of immigrants.
• “Once again, networks are missing Latino political news stories. This year, stories concerning Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales provided the networks an opportunity to explore the political climate of the Latino community. Not one network did a story that provided the Hispanic perspective on these issues.”.

Also, “Content analysis of two sample weeks of network news coverage found:

• ” Latinos continued to be nearly absent from general news coverage. Out of 115 stories NAHJ examined during the two sample weeks, only four were exclusively about Latinos and only two featured Latinos as news sources.”

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“60 Minutes” Gets Ratings, Fallout on Duke Case

Ed Bradley’s investigation of the Duke University lacrosse rape case on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” Sunday helped give the program its largest audience since January—17.3 million viewers, Gail Shister reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But it also sparked criticism about who wasn’t included on the show and a comparison of which words were allowed on the air and which on the CBS Web site.

“60 Minutes” finished ninth among more than 200 programs last week, Shister wrote on Thursday.

In the Wilmington (N.C.) Journal, a black newspaper that has been following the case, Cash Michaels reviewed commentary about the broadcast.

Michaels quoted North Carolina Central University Law Professor Irving Joyner saying, “All of the admittedly weak evidence so far seen by the media ‘does not mean it is the only information prosecutors have available to them.’ The 60 Minutes piece “failed to present anything about the state’s case, and that’s the way it should have been,’ Joyner said. ‘I thought it was a pro-defense theme that sought to take a shot at Nifong, and possibly impact the election, more than anything else.’ In fact, Joyner adds, there is a lot of evidence and witness testimony that simply isn’t reduced to writing.”

Meanwhile, Felix Gillette, writing on CJR Daily, noted that the television show and its Web version disagreed on how explicit to be in rendering the language used by Kim Roberts, one of the exotic dancers who, along with the alleged victim, performed at the party on the night in question. On the show, Roberts said of one of the lacrosse players, “I called him a little-dick white boy,” laughing. “And how he couldn’t get it on his own and had to pay for it. So, he was mad. And it ended with him callin’ me the n-word. And it echoed, so you heard nigger once, and then you heard, nigger, nigger, nigger.”

But when CBSNews.com published a piece about the “60 Minutes” segment, it was rendered as, “‘I called him a little [expletive] white boy,’ she recalls laughing.

“‘And how he couldn’t get it on his own and had to pay for it. So, he was mad. And it ended with him callin’ me the n-word. And it echoed, so you heard n….. once, and then you heard, n….., n….., n….. .'”

Kevin Tedesco, a spokesman for “60 Minutes,” said the difference was the result of a simple mistake. “They’re usually in synch,” Tedesco said of the two media. “Whatever is used on the air would be used on the Web site.”

• Gregory Phillips, Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun: Media experts examine rape case coverage [Added Oct. 21]

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Native Journalists Moving Office to U. of Oklahoma

“With an eye toward the future and the goals in its new strategic plan, the Native American Journalists Association has accepted an invitation to move to the University of Oklahoma in Norman,” the association announced on Friday.

“NAJA will be housed in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which has a new building and already is undergoing an expansion. The NAJA Board of Directors saw that as a critical resource. NAJA’s strategic plan calls for adding staff members to expand and develop educational programs, professional development, and increase fundraising, among other initiatives. The plan also calls for greater interaction with tribes and Native media, and Oklahoma has both in abundance.

A college statement said, “Plans are currently to house the NAJA headquarters in Copeland Hall, one of two facilities managed by the Gaylord College. . . . it is expected that NAJA will not fully relocate until summer 2007.”

Since 2002, NAJA has been on the campus of the University of South Dakota, and in 2003 moved into the Al Neuharth Media Center, sharing space with the Freedom Forum, NAJA noted.

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Short Takes

• “The Afro-American Newspaper will begin featuring its entire newspaper online Oct. 21,” Julekha Dash reported Thursday in the Baltimore Business Journal. “The newspaper, which publishes an edition in Baltimore and another one in Washington, will offer the online version for free for three months. Thereafter, subscribers will have to pay $16 a year. The Afro offers daily news on its Web site. But later this month the newspaper will begin featuring the entire newspaper online and offer readers the ability to search its newspaper content. It will also feature audio, video and flash technology,” Dash wrote.
• Two more critics of Juan Williams’ book, “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It,” generated columns this week. In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sylvester Brown wrote, “It’s the ‘Phony Leaders’ part of Williams’ book title that bothers me. Credible studies indicate that racial discrimination still exists in housing, lending, employment and in the criminal justice system. If the problems aren’t ‘phony,’ then how can those who confront them be deemed so?” On the new BlackAgendaReport.com, Bruce Dixon said, “if, as he says, he has a message for black America, Williams is shouting it from a place where reason and logic do not apply, and facts just plain don’t matter.”
• “First Sgt. Charles M. King, 48, was a career soldier who was scheduled to return home next month” from Iraq, where he was killed, “said his mother, Gladys King, who, with her husband, Charles, still lives in the same Lee-Miles neighborhood where their son grew up,” John P. Coyle wrote Wednesday in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. King’s fiance was Dana Canedy, assistant national editor at the New York Times.
• “While Warner Saunders recovers from the world’s worst case of laryngitis, WMAQ-Channel 5 viewers are getting a nightly preview of what could be the anchor team of the future,” Robert Feder wrote Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Except for a few rough nights last week, Saunders has been missing as principal news anchor at the NBC-owned station since August. His bosses say he picked up a bug while vacationing in South America that caused him to lose his voice.”
• Media ownership is already so concentrated in even the biggest markets that removing the ban on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership would devastate the diversity of local news and opinion, according to a study released Thursday afternoon by the Media and Democracy Coalition, which is opposed to changes in cross-ownership rules, Mark Fitzgerald reported Thursday in Editor & Publisher.
• The move last week by the Atlanta anchor formerly known as Monica Kaufman “to be known on-air as Pearson is in step with a growing wave of brides saying ‘I do’ to their husband’s name,” Helena Oliviero wrote Thursday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
• Speed Channel has suspended NASCAR pit reporter Ray Dunlap one week for making disparaging remarks about Hispanics during a recent appearance on the Speed show “Tradin’ Paint,” Jim Utter reported Thursday in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. “During a discussion with Nextel Cup driver Michael Waltrip about NASCAR’s efforts to expand its fan base among minorities, Dunlap took issue with a claim that 10 percent of NASCAR fans are Hispanic and made some jokes on the topic. A tape or transcript of the exchange was not immediately available Thursday and SPEED declined to say exactly what Dunlap said,” the Associated Press reported.
• “Undocumented workers’ or ‘unauthorized migrants’ are euphemisms used for a reason — to sugarcoat uncomfortable truths,” Robert L. Jamieson Jr. argued Tuesday in his Seattle Post-Intelligencer column.
• “Sparkle Michelle Rai was found strangled and stabbed to death on April 26, 2000. At the time, she was with her 7-month-old daughter. Rai is the stepdaughter of WXIA-TV reporter Donna Lowry,” Jeffry Scott reported Sept. 22 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Chiman Rai, 67, who insists he is innocent, remains jailed in connection with the case, the newspaper reported Wednesday. “Prosecutors say Rai, a native of India and a former professor at a historically black college, never approved of his son’s marriage to a black woman,” Beth Warren wrote.
• The deadline for applications to the Maynard Institute’s Media Academy, the institute’s program for new managers, is Oct. 31. The next program will be held Jan. 7-13 and March 25-31 at the Nieman Foundation facilities at Harvard University. Program participants attend both sessions.